Inheritor (39 page)

"We're here to enjoy ourselves. Make an effort at it. And get your wits about you. Complain to me in private if you must.
Don't
offend her. This is not a lesson. This is not an understatement. This is by
no
means a game."

Prolonged silence from the shadow in front of the light.

Then, coldly: "Oh, I don't take it for that, nadi."

It was sunset outside. The hilltop felt the chill of evening. But the fireplace functioned, the long table had a white cloth and the benches had folded blankets to keep the splinters from ruining clothes. There was crystal, there were candles, there was the aiji's banner, red and black, and the banner of Malguri, red and green, within the candle and firelight, and there was a respectable, even a splendid dinner in front of them. Ilisidi sat in the endmost seat; Banichi and Jago and Cenedi were seated, privilege of rank; Tano and Algini were seated but on duty, even here, so Banichi said; and the paidhiin were seated, one on one side, one on the other.

No one sat endmost to match Ilisidi. But then, no one ranked that high in the Association but the aiji himself.

There was pastry, there was a vegetable course — immense quantities disappeared, which Bren helped, and Jase discovered a vegetable dish he favored, clearly, while it remained a wonder where Ilisidi put the quantities she tucked away; certainly it wasn't evident on her spare and (for an ateva) diminutive frame.

It must go into sheer energy, Bren decided. For a while there was no discussion, only food, and then the main course arrived, the seasonal fare, which was fish, and a delightful tart berry sauce.

"So," Ilisidi said, "did you settle your disagreement, you two?"

The woman missed nothing.

"Jas-on-paidhi?"

"Nand' dowager, I am told not to talk except the children's language. I apologize for my inability in advance."

"Oh, risk it. I'm not easily shocked."

God, Bren thought. "Nand' dowager," he said. "Jase-paidhi is at a great disadvantage of vocabulary."

"As the nation heard." Ilisidi tapped her glass and a servant poured. "Water. Pure spring water. Perfectly safe. — But, do you know, Jase-paidhi, I would have bet against your learning the language so quickly. Yolanda-paidhi, on the island, of course, had no such requirement."

"No, nand' dowager."

"And she's been turning over the precious secrets — at a greater rate of speed?"

Pitfall, Bren thought and opened his mouth and didn't dare say a word.

"Not so, I think, if you please, nand' dowager. Engineering diagrams are the same with both the island and Bren-paidhi."

"One hears also of sad news from that quarter. One regrets your loss, Jas-on-paidhi."

Jase ducked his head. "Thank you for your good will, nand' dowager."

"And how
is
nand' Yolanda? Is she faring well? I get
no
news from my reprehensible grandson."

"I believe she is well, nand' dowager."

"You believe she is well."

Jase looked toward him, disturbed, likely not sure he'd followed her around that corner or used the right word. He had.

"He doesn't understand, nand' dowager," Bren said. And didn't add, thinking of those illicit radio transmissions, Nor do I.

"Oh, well. How do you find the fish, Jas-on-paidhi?"

"The fish is very good, nand' dowager."

"Good. — Such an innocent. What's it like on the ship, Jase-paidhi? Tell me. Satisfy an old woman."

"It's — a lot like being indoors."

"Oh, well, boring, then. Give me the open air, I say. Do you like it there?"

"I hope to go back there. When the ship flies, nand' dowager."

"And when will that be?"

"I'd say sooner rather than later, aiji-ma," Bren said, anxious to divert Ilisidi from her stalking and probing for reaction, one damned jab after another. She was
not
on her best behavior and she was enjoying every second of it.

"Another damned machine roaring and polluting the fields," Ilisidi said, and had a bite of fish. "Now, one could make a ship to go beneath the sea and see the wonders there. Have you ever thought of that, nand' paidhi?"

"It could be done," Bren said, and broke every law on the books.

"You might persuade me to go on a ship like that. I'm less sure about this spaceship. What do you think, nand' Jase?"

"About what, nand' dowager? I'm not sure I follow."

"Do you think I'm too old to fly on your ship?"

"No, nand' dowager. You ride. I'm sure you could fly."

"Wise lad. Flattery is the essence of politics. One wondered whether ship-folk are as wise as Mospheirans. Possibly they are."

"They can learn," Bren said, before Jase could think of words. "Don't you say yourself, aiji-ma, that he's quick?"

"Oh, not so quick as you, nand' paidhi."

"One tries, aiji-ma." It was a fencing match from start to finish. "So what do you have in store for us?"

"A brisk ride, a little outing. — More fish, nand' paidhi? I'll assure you simpler fare tomorrow."

He recalled Ilisidi's brisk rides and hoped Jase didn't break his neck. And had the other helping, taking that for a warning.

Jase, fortunately, said nothing. But seemed not to have as great an appetite.

"Well, well," Ilisidi began.

And of a sudden Banichi, Cenedi, and Jago were simultaneously leaving the benches in a fast maneuver, and Tano and Algini, rising, had guns visible in their hands. So did two of the servants. Something was beeping.

"Perimeter alarm," Cenedi said, with a slight sketch of a bow toward Ilisidi. And started giving orders to persons unseen in the room.

"Piffle," Ilisidi said, and rose slowly from the only chair. "What a pest!"

As a gunshot popped somewhere in the distance.

And Cenedi said, after recourse to his pocket com, "One individual. They have him."

"Him, is it?"

Oh, God, Bren thought with a sinking feeling.

"They haven't killed him, have they?" Bren asked, and held his breath until Banichi had asked and received an answer.

"No. He flung himself to the ground and surrendered. Quite wisely so, nadi."

Bren sat down again and had another sip of his drink.

The island of Dur was, he recalled from the map, off the northern coast of the promontory — down a great steep bluff that one would take for a barrier to sensible people. But it was there.

And after witnessing an ungodly persistence in a culture where a young man knew he was risking his life, he had a sinking feeling of a persistence that, measured against a minor air traffic incident, no longer made sense.

«
^
»

T
hey were,
Banichi said, over the dessert course, I
questioning
the young man, and would have a report soon.

Jase looked entirely unhappy, and concentrated on the cream pastry with mintlike icing.

Pastries disappeared by twos and threes off atevi plates, and Bren poked at his with occasional glances at Jago, who returned not a look in his direction. Ilisidi had said nothing further; Cenedi wouldn't. Banichi wasn't communicating beyond what he'd said.

"The boy is a fool," Ilisidi said, out of no prior question, and added, "Do you know, lord Geigi invited us fishing, and offered to meet us with his boat on the southern reach by the airport. But I think this silliness may divert us to the north."

That brought a glance up from Jase, and Bren suffered a turn of the stomach. Nothing at this moment was chance, not Ilisidi's remark, not the boy's intrusion into a government reserve, not the mention of lord Geigi, and Bren recalled all too well the radio traffic to the north, which was to the north — of the island of Dur.

Which was not beyond reach of Mogari-nai and the earth station. Which was not beyond reach of the town of Saduri. Which was not beyond reach of the fortress where they were having holiday with a mostly invisible security with pipe and board scaffolding and an excess of dust in the shadows yonder.

Deana Hanks and her damned radio talk.

And her connections to Direiso and her ambitions to move against Tabini?

Direiso and her cat's-paw Saigimi, who was now dead, thanks to Tabini?

Direiso, who wished to be aiji in Shejidan, and who was a neighbor to Taiben?

Taiben was not only Tabini's habitual retreat and ancestral holding, but also the wintering-place for Tabini's aged and eastern-born grandmother who herself had twice nearly been aiji, but for the legislatures concluding her ascendancy would mean bloody retributions for past wrongs.

Their Ilisidi, their host tonight, sitting demolishing a third cream pastry.

The situation had so many angles one wanted tongs to handle it.

"So," Jase said, where angels and fools alike feared to tread. "Nand' dowager, but we
are
going fishing?"

Going fishing, Bren thought in disbelief.
Going fishing
? They had a young man under interrogation for invasion of a perimeter only slightly less touchy than that around Tabini himself, Ilisidi talking about lord Geigi joining them, and Deana Hanks talking to two atevi on radio who were probably Direiso's agents, and Jase asked were they going fishing?

His roommate, however, was neither clairvoyant nor briefed on matters, and the last statement he'd heard uttered regarded lord Geigi and a boat.

Ilisidi never batted an eye as she looked in Jase's direction and said, "Perhaps."

Oh, God, Bren thought, feeling that the conversation was going down by the stern. He tried to catch Jago's eye, or Banichi's, and got nothing but a stare from Cenedi as uninformative and sealed as Ilisidi's was. He looked the other direction down the table, at Algini, and Tano, and a cluster of the dowager's young men, as she called them, all Guild, all dangerous, all doubtless better informed than he was.

"I would like the Onondisi bay, nand' dowager," Jase said. "I've heard a great deal about the island. I saw it from the air." r

Ilisidi quirked that brow that could, were the Guild under such instructions, doom a man to die, and smiled at Jase.

"We may, I say, go north, nadi."

Bren dropped his knife onto the stone floor, necessitating a scramble by servants to retrieve it.

"Foolish of me," Bren said with a deep bow of his head, and allowed its replacement with a clean one without comment. "Perhaps it's the drink, nand' dowager. May I suggest my associate go to bed now."

"Early start tomorrow," Ilisidi said. "These young folk. Cenedi-ji, were we ever so easily exhausted?"

"I think not, aiji-ma," Cenedi said quietly.

"This modern reliance on machines." Ilisidi made a wave of her hand. "Go, go! No one should leave the table before he's done, but get to bed in good season, else I assure you you'll pay for it tomorrow!"

Jase at least comprehended it was a dismissal and, Tano and Algini clearing the bench for him, he was able to extricate himself. Bren worked his way out, having been similarly freed by two of Ilisidi's security. The two further benches rose in courtesy to the departing paidhiin.

"Go, go," Ilisidi said to the offered bows, and gave another wave. "In the morning, gather at the front steps."

"Nand' dowager," Jase said with a further bow, and not a thing else. Bren escorted him from the hall, up the steps, to their room, and inside, into the candle-lit dark and chill of an unheated room.

Jase turned. Bren shut the door.

Jase said, humanwise: "Trust you, is it?"

"What's the matter with you? Were you
trying
to foul things up or was it your lucky night?"

At least Jase shut up, whether in temper or the mild realization that things might be more complicated than he thought.

"Do me a great favor, if you please, nadi. Go to bed."

"Are you coming back?"

"I assure you. Take whichever side you wish, nadi, and I will gladly take the other."

"Where are
you
going?"

"To try to patch up the dowager's good regard and find out what the boy from Dur is doing here, at the real risk of his life."

He might have been mistaken by candlelight; but there was a little reckoning of that latter statement on Jase's part, and maybe a prudent decision not to ask a question he had in mind.

"Will they tell you that?" Jase asked.

"They'd have told
you
if you hadn't set the evening on its ear. You do
not
question the dowager and you do
not
question her arrangements! Jase, what in hell's the matter with you? This is your associate here, me! This is the person with an equal interest in seeing that ship fly! What are we fighting about?"

He expected an explosion at least of equivalent magnitude. "Nadi," Jase began in Ragi, and then again, "What do I have to do to have you on my side, nadi?"

"I
am
on your side!" He dropped his voice, moved close and seized Jase by the lapels long enough to bring his lips to Jase's ear. "Bug," was all he whispered, and Jase went wooden in his grip and very quiet.

"Just stay here," Bren said aloud and let go.

And left.

Downstairs again, toward their makeshift banquet hall, where nothing had much changed except most of the security was on their feet, the servants were cleaning up, and Ilisidi was still seated, her cane, however, in her hands, and her chair angled at forty-five degrees to the table.

"Well," Ilisidi said, as if he satisfied expectations by appearing.

"Tano-ji," he said in passing, though it was an act of temerity to give orders to Tano, or to give orders to anyone in Ilisidi's hall, "keep an eye on Jase, please."

"Yes," Tano said as Bren came to Ilisidi.

"Dowager-ji," Bren said, "first, forgive my associate his lack of understanding."

There was a nod, with amiable quiet.

"And forgive me mine. But, nand' dowager, is there anything I may ask in confidence?"

"What do you wish to know, nand' paidhi?"

"Why is that boy here, aiji-ma?"

Ilisidi braced the ferrule of her cane against the irregular stones of the floor and leaned forward. "A good question. Cenedi-ji,
why
is this boy here?"